FARO is the Flemish Institution for Cultural Heritage

Our mission is to support you and help you flourish

We work for and with heritage workers within archives, heritage libraries, heritage cells, organisations that focus on intangible cultural heritage, heritage service providers, and museums. Our services also extend to target groups such as policymakers and municipal culture and heritage services. 

Together we can achieve more. We purposely bring together people with a wide variety of expertise. We play a central role in putting current heritage issues on the agenda of policy and society. We organise practice-oriented heritage training programmes, and offer advice as well as tailored guidance. We also offer further information, general as well as in-depth, through our specialist library, by means of our quarterly faro journal, and of course also on our detailed website.

We continuously develop and expand our knowledge and expertise and we invest in practice-oriented research. This enables us to share national and international views, insights and practices with our partners. Erfgoedwijzer is one of the many good examples of this. 

We work together with the cultural heritage sector in Flanders and Brussels to highlight the rich and diverse cultural heritage landscape. We are the driving force behind the annual Erfgoeddag (Heritage Day) as well as the Heritage App, and we explore media partnerships. 

You can find out more about our mission, vision, values and the competences assigned to us by decree here. You can find a summary of our policy plan for 2019-2023 on our website as well.

At your service!


Our team is at your service. How can we assist you?

Advice and tailored guidance

Do you require (first-line) advice or guidance? FARO is happy to help with almost all aspects of cultural heritage management and practice. From policy planning, collection management, diversity policy and marketing to preventive conservation, mediation and the fostering of cultural heritage values. In addition, we have also developed several support tools:

  • Thanks to the Uitleendienst Erfgoed (heritage lending service) you can borrow material free of charge that will facilitate collection management.
  • In the Databank Incidenten Cultureel Erfgoed (database for cultural heritage incidents), you can register all ‘incidents’ that occur involving heritage collections managed by your cultural heritage organisation. 
  • The Heritage App enables you to easily provide digital access to your organisation’s heritage assets and to enrich them further.

Training

To strengthen your heritage skills and competences, FARO offers a comprehensive training programme. From theory to practice, from basic knowledge to experimentation, for starters as well as seasoned heritage workers, from one-off sessions to longer training series: you can find it all in our training calendar. Feel free to get in touch with us with any questions about this, or if you have any suggestions to expand this offer further.  

Knowledge development

We collect practical knowledge and expertise for you. We contextualise and package it in a user-friendly manner so we can share it through our platforms, such as this website and Erfgoedwijzer. We continue to expand the FARO library. We conduct practice-oriented research and contribute to monitoring and policy-relevant research, together with the Department of Culture, Youth & Media. 

So, what can’t we help you with?